The demand for women's education is on upswing in Pakistan where even parents in rural areas are motivated to send their wards for quality education despite meagre sources of income. Ms.

Despite laws prohibiting it, forced labor to pay debts are very common in Pakistan. A report by the U.S. Government in 2009 describes the Asian country as a source, transit and destination of the traffic of men, women and children into forced labor and sexual exploitation.

The threat of sexual attack is frequently used as a weapon for silencing female journalists working abroad, according to a report released Tuesday by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Twenty-five women were rescued by the Zamboanga sea-based anti-human trafficking task force in two separate operations last Monday.

Acting on a tip from an informant, authorities first rescued nine women who were being kept in a safe house in Barangay Rio Hondo.

The women were to be brought to Malaysia to work, even without the proper travel documents.

Minister for Women, Children and People with Disabilities, Lulu Xingwana, has reiterated the need for extra measures to be taken to accelerate the process of transformation and empowerment of women.

Presenting her department's Budget Vote in Parliament on Tuesday, Xingwana said while women constitute more than 50 percent of the population, they remain severely underrepresented in decision making positions.

Multinational corporations have often ignored human rights, environmental regulations and labor laws in their business practices around the world, causing "exceptional damage" in underdeveloped countries, a Vatican official said.

Recently, Uganda made history when the 9th Parliament overwhelmingly supported Hon. Rebecca Alitwala Kadaga's bid for Speaker and elected her to become the first Ugandan woman to occupy the position of Speaker of Parliament.

The Gender Research and Documentation Centre and the Political Science Departments of the University of Sierra Leone in collaboration with the 50/50 Group of Sierra Leone will formally launch a research project on interrogating young women's political participation in post-war Sierra Leone on 6 June 2011 at the Mary Kingsley Theatre, Fourah Bay College in Freetown.

Five years after the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) revised its laws against sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), these crimes continue to go unpunished because of judicial inaction and a legal culture at odds with the changes. The laws, ignored and misinterpreted, have left escalating numbers of sexual violence survivors unprotected, and perpetrators free to violate again.

Among the issues facing women in southern Sudan are high rates of poverty, illiteracy and maternal mortality. Bringing those numbers down by 2015 is the aim of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs.